FELLOWSHIP  BOOKS 

EdTtof  GyjMani  Stratton 


DMNE 
DISCONTENT 


COPYRIGHT  1913 
BY  E.  P.  DLTTON  &  CO. 


DIVINE 
DISCONTENT 

arnes  (Jut/Trie" 


I.  OF  CONTENT 

OUR  praise  of  content  is  too  idle. 
Among  arduous  days  we  set  up  this 
ideal  of  rest,  our  own  desires  far  too 
tempestuous  to  let  us  be  at  such  a  haven, 
and  circumstances  too  busy  with  our  lives. 
So  it  is  no  foolish  notion  that  contentment 
sets  a  limit  upon  meaner  ambitions  and 
gives  room  in  the  world  for  nobler.  The  man 
who  beholds  little  of  life  believes  there  is  no 
more.  A  child,  still  radiant  with  the  trail  of 
glory,  adventures  only  upon  the  path  of  inno- 
cence, snug  and  content  with  food  and  warmth 
and  sleep,  securely  shut  from  the  hurt  (which 
is  knowledge)  within  his  mother's  arms. 
Maybe  I  take  it  on  trust  from  the  robin  that 

i  <%  sings 


sings  by  my  window  on  the  bough  of  an  apple- 
tree;  but,  for  all  his  pertness,  he  is  an  innocent 
too  and  finds  contentment  without  much  to-do. 
His  business  does  not  mock  at  good  daylight, 
he  does  not  go  far  from  home.  And  unlike 
that  ragged  beggar  of  the  streets  whose  misery 
makes  him  sing,  the  robin  sings  for  gladness, 
or  there  is  no  reason  for  him  to  sing  at  all. 
Since  the  Fall  we  have  to  regard  man's  life 
of  experience  as  a  more  complicated  matter. 
The  time  comes  when  the  cloud  loses  a  little 
its  early  saturation  of  glory  and  takes  a  greyer 
light,  when  the  child's  heart  begins  to  beat 
with  human  passions.  Are  they  right  or 
wrong  who  hazard  that  the  tragedy  of  Adam 
took  from  mankind  a  more  wondrous  life  of 
innocence?  Is  the  divine  law  so  withdrawn 
from  operation  within  and  around  us  that 
we  must  mourn  amid  experience  the  loss  of 
the  "contrary  state"  of  innocence?  The 
danger  would  be  in  judging  our  case  from  an 
academic  or  ecclesiastical  proposition,  or  from 
words  whose  significance  is  hidden  until  life 
2 


itself  has  ripened  in  us  the  wisdom  we  may 
read  them  by.  Inspiration,  the  work  of  the 
divine,  lies  embedded  within  experience;  it 
comes  unbidden  in  unlikely  places  to  unlikely 
persons.  It  may  forsake  the  monk  early  upon 
his  knees  before  the  high  altar,  and  uplift  the 
soul  of  the  humble  woman  who  coaxes  the 
kitchen  fire  to  light.  It  may  be  radiant  in  a 
railway  carriage,  or  fill  a  wakeful  night  with 
vision.  We  have  no  guarantee  that  we  shall 
hold  or  behold  it,  if  by  an  intellectual  shift 
we  seek  to  enclose  it  within  the  boundary  of 
our  wit.  By  no  sort  of  arithmetic  may  it 
be  added  or  divided.  Thus,  content,  the  true 
virtue  which  fine  souls  exhale  all  about  them, 
is  a  flashing  inward  light,  a  genial  warmth, 
a  sign  of  wholeness  and  fitness;  but  we  must 
be  particular  as  to  its  quality,  and  not  be  led 
astray  by  that  mere  dumbness  and  numbness 
of  faculty,  that  animal  sleep  from  which  the 
vision  is  shut.  You  cannot  make  content  from 
the  absence  of  cause  for  discontent.  Eat  and 
drink  as  you  may,  you  are  still  hungry,  still 
3  <%  thirsty. 


thirsty.  Strange  lands  and  strange  faces  and 
many  pleasures  will  still  leave  you  the  burden 
of  yourself;  and  the  task  upon  your  table 
is  not  added  to,  for  all  your  fury  of  steam 
and  electricity.  The  strangest  of  all  strange 
things  is  yourself  to  the  end.  Those  are 
unworthy  of  our  regard  who  seek  content- 
ment by  the  avoidance  of  daily  vicissitude, 
holding  the  law  of  self-preservation  to  be 
the  one  law  which  makes  for  right  living. 
"Children  are  noisy  creatures  and  spoil  the 
house,"  say  some;  "let  us  have  none  of  them: 
for  us  an  orderly  place  with  quiet  days  and 
unbroken  nights  of  sleep."  These  good  folk 
are  clean,  industrious,  virtuous,  a  pattern  to 
casual  passers-by.  But  their  methods  are 
high-handed.  They  hate  a  dog,  but  love 
a  doormat;  they  love  chairs  and  curtains 
better  than  children;  for  their  virtue  is  not 
discerned  through  temptation  or  proved  by 
adversity.  They  have  virtue  as  though  life 
were  emptied  of  humour  and  affection  to 
make  room  for  it.  Poised  amid  the  chances 


of  existence,  they  yet  take  none,  and  feel  no 
lack,  spending  their  days  dusting  and  scrub- 
bing, in  an  eternal  preparation  for  the  life 
which  they  have  no  time  to  live.  Others 
make  for  themselves  a  Spartan  law  against 
giving  and  lending,  or  perhaps  they  rule 
hospitality  so  rigidly  for  themselves  and 
against  their  friends  that  visiting  at  their 
house  partakes  of  a  fearful  discipline,  not 
often  to  be  undertaken.  It  is  all  to  no  pur- 
pose: these  have  not  the  root  of  the  matter  in 
them :  their  aim  is  bad,  and  their  arrows  wide 
of  the  mark.  Where  then  is  true  contentment 
to  be  found?  There  is  a  pretty  parable  in 
one  of  the  school  books  of  a  certain  king  who 
went  among  his  people,  after  the  old  fashion 
of  kings,  seeking  wisdom.  Among  princes 
and  nobles  he  could  find  no  man  who  was 
contented;  so,  disguised  under  a  cloak  of  red 
and  gold,  with  a  long  blue  feather  in  his 
cap,  he  set  forth  to  discover,  if  he  could,  a 
man  who  \vas  truly  contented.  After  trying 
a  merchant  and  a  farmer,  who  proved  both  to 
5  «febe 


be  envious  and  discontented  men,  he  went  to 
the  cottage  of  an  old  shepherd  and  was  invited 
to  step  in  and  rest  himself.  And  after  par- 
taking of  some  homely  food,  he  and  his  host 
sat  upon  a  bench  by  the  cottage  door  to  talk. 
Here  at  length  was  content,  in  owning  noth- 
ing of  the  world's  goods,  in  having  no  assur- 
ance but  in  Providence,  in  an  easy  mind,  plain 
labour  and  simple  submission  to  the  will  of 
others.  In  the  picture  the  king's  high  look 
is  good  to  see  while  he  sits  beside  the  bent 
and  wrinkled  peasant  to  learn  the  lesson  which 
does  not  suffer  him  to  change  places,  as  he 
would  surely  need  to  do  if  Hans  Andersen 
had  told  his  story.  No,  he  draws  the  precise 
moral  which  he  needs,  going  his  way  to  con- 
tentment, but  contentment  fitting  to  a  king. 
Being  a  king  of  romance,  he  had  no  chamber- 
lain who  would  smooth  the  rough  places  in 
his  adventures  and  do  the  journey-work  of  his 
questing,  nor  had  he  lost  the  comeliness  of 
manhood  in  the  abstraction  of  kingship.  So 
the  heavenly  meaning  of  the  parable  goes  out 
6 


beyond  its  earthly  story  everywhere;  and  the 
natural  schoolboy  will  return  to  it,  as  I  do, 
with  thoughts  which  the  pedagogue  has  not 
dreamed  of.  Perhaps  it  does  not  recommend 
the  age  which  we  live  in  to  know  that  what 
was  the  text  of  the  romantic  tale  is  now  the 
economist's  text.  He  demands  of  those  who 
are  content  with  little  that  they  shall  con- 
sider the  claims  of  their  fellows.  Indeed  the 
economist  will  have  none  of  these  pageants 
of  grinning  poverty  miscalled  moral  emblems. 
Let  us  have,  says  he,  a  manlier  measure,  a 
temper  thankful  in  due  proportion  to  tangible 
possessions  either  mental  or  physical.  We 
cannot  dazzle  him  with  our  red  and  gold, 
bought  at  the  price  of  bent  backs  and  wrinkled 
faces.  Content  has  indeed  been  too  often  the 
gift  of  the  rich  to  the  poor;  out  of  it  they 
have  constructed  spurious  forms  of  authority 
and  favourable  conditions  for  charitable  enter- 
prise. So  true  is  this  that  one  seldom  hears 
the  old  formula  uttered  upon  the  poor  with- 
out feeling  the  force  of  a  strong  interrogation. 
7  ^  Who 


Who  created  this  place  wherein  the  poor 
man  is  admonished  to  remain  content?  Is 
any  State  the  better  for  ill-educated,  ill-fed 
beings?  Is  any  civilization  flattered  or  any 
religious  belief  upheld  by  thankfulness  which 
is  the  result  of  repression  and  tyranny?  No, 
we  may  adapt  the  saying  of  the  philosopher 
and  declare  the  benefits  of  a  poor  condition 
praiseworthy  but  not  enviable.  Contentment 
which  is  the  sign  of  limited  understanding 
rather  than  a  measure  of  the  goodness  of 
content  is  a  rebuke,  a  very  eloquent  rebuke. 
The  rich  man  is  no  less  foolishly  content  who 
suffers  his  possessions  to  supplant  his  manly 
quality  or  buy  him  out  of  reality.  Even  the 
economist  himself  must  beware  lest  he  set  too 
much  store  upon  goods,  lest  he  imagine 
a  vain  sort  of  well-being  for  those  whom  he 
would  benefit  by  his  reasonings.  The  worker 
has  the  goodly  heritage  of  skill.  He  can  do 
things  with  his  hands  which  no  clerk  or  man- 
ager or  politician  can  know  the  inwardness 
of.  It  is  likely  that  he  will  never  be  greatly 


interested  in  a  villa  or  a  motor-car,  which  arc 
inferior  distractions.  The  simplicity  of  men's 
minds  is  hard  to  kill,  whatever  engine  we  use 
upon  it,  and  the  primitive  state  of  content- 
ment baffles  our  endeavours  at  putting  a  fence 
about  it  The  relation  of  content  is  to  the 
varying  desires  of  mankind;  its  fullness  and 
profundity  are  to  be  measured  by  the  quality 
of  the  vessel  and  its  capacity,  whether  material 
or  spiritual.  One  may  be  content  with  no 
more  than  food,  content  to  the  measure  of 
hunger's  urgency,  pleased  then  to  rest  drowsily 
and  to  have  a  benign  approbation  of  the  world 
as  it  is,  full  and  comfortable,  prosperous 
within  the  range  of  appetite.  Another  may 
find  in  a  competency  of  this  world's  goods 
the  top  of  his  bent,  the  utmost  apex  of  his  am- 
bition, sleeping  and  waking  always  without 
fear  of  the  wolf  which  haunts  the  poor  man's 
door,  able  to  indulge  the  pride  which  cries 
exultingly  "I  owe  not  any  man."  Thus  the 
content  which  is  complete  so  easily  can  boast 
of  no  divine  hunger.  Our  praise  is  for  men 
9  ^  rf 


of  high  desire  and  great  endeavour.  In  their 
contentment  we  see  the  enterprise  extin- 
guished, the  loss  of  a  goodly  companionship. 
Retirement,  that  desperate  ideal  of  the  trades- 
man, is  an  end  of  usefulness:  the  man  makes 
too  much  haste  to  die,  with  ten  years  yet  to 
live.  Those  who  are  of  the  higher  order  must 
needs  achieve  something;  for  they  have  to  be 
fit  as  well  as  desirous,  theirs  being  no  easy  or 
enviable  place.  So  mighty  a  discontent,  so 
yearning  an  imagination, — where  within  our 
rewards  is  the  gift  which  will  reward  it  and  let 
it  rest  content?  Cuchulain  fought  the  ocean 
for  two  whole  days,  and  then  it  passed  over 
him;  Oisin  sought  for  three  hundred  years 
to  appease  his  insatiable  heart  with  all  the 
pleasures  of  faeryland.  And  history  is 
hardly  less  extraordinary  a  record  of  enduring 
idealism.  The  common  sailor  had  no  notion 
of  the  faith  which  kept  Columbus  upon  his 
search  for  the  new  world ;  for  upon  his  limited 
mental  horizon  no  enchanted  lands  dawned. 
And  when  at  last  the  swift  current  swept 
10 


beneath  the  great  ship's  keel  telling  of  inland 
waters  and  pouring  rivers,  he  had  no  power 
to  share  in  the  fierce  elation  of  the  master- 
mind which  had  designed  a  continent  before- 
hand and  steered  a  course  to  it  in  faith.  But 
there  are  adventures  enough  left  to  us.  If 
you  watch  the  people  in  the  streets  of  a  city, 
you  will  see  that  each  one  heads,  each  one 
follows,  a  procession;  up  one  turning  and 
down  another,  men  and  women  and  children 
go  all  the  day  long.  They  are  always  chang- 
ing and  dividing,  each  individual  intent  upon 
some  errand;  but  always  leading  and  always 
led.  To  the  idle  spectator  there  is  no  clue  to 
the  many  impulses  which  make  up  this  pag- 
eantry of  even*  day;  only  afterwards  the 
thought  will  come  to  him  as  he  walks,  that  he 
also  leads  and  follows,  and  then  he  will  walk 
with  pride,  but  with  humility  also.  Some- 
how so  we  may  gather  an  idea  of  the  wider 
relevance  of  our  lives,  and  be  little  concerned 
with  content  which  provides  ourselves  and 
takes  away  from  noble  strife  among  men. 
ii 


II.  OF  DIVINE  DISCONTENT 

$5  WHEREAS  material  discontent  goes  to 
the  forwarding  of  common  ambitions,  having 
for  success  an  ideal  which  is  the  mark  of 
a  passive  spiritual  condition — mere  content- 
ment— the  discontent  which  is  divine  may 
well  be  the  name  of  that  critical  attitude  of 
the  soul  towards  mortal  circumstance  and  the 
changes  which  life  effects  in  the  fibre  of  man's 
consciousness.  It  also  encloses  the  selective- 
ness  of  a  delicately  tempered  sensibility  within 
its  meaning,  and  gives  the  thought  a  wistful  en- 
tanglement with  origins,  a  plain  hint  of  God 
actively  implanted  in  the  flesh.  The  strange 
gift  of  vision  strips  away  the  veils  which  hide 
the  spiritual  life  from  eyes  which  have  not 
yet  learned  to  see,  and,  as  if  from  a  great 
height,  discerns  the  far  horizon  and  the  beck- 
oning which  allures  and  supports  through  all 
vicissitudes,  and  has  in  it  the  promise  of  the 
12 


eternal.  But  divine  discontent  seeks  no 
malign  or  insufficient  comfort  from  mental 
false-dealing  so  acutely  spoken  of  in  the 
words:  "They  have  healed  also  the  hurt  of 
the  daughter  of  my  people  slightly,  saying, 
Peace,  peace;  when  there  is  no  peace." 
The  Bible  is  rich  in  the  language  of  divine 
discontent,  aiming  its  heavy  blows  at  false 
optimism  and  at  comfortings  which  are 
rooted  in  unfaith  and  pessimism.  With 
many  shifts,  at  many  pains,  the  mind  of  man 
searches  the  recesses  of  experience  for  a  span 
of  rest  which  shall  not  turn  into  a  battlefield. 
He  ransacks  the  world  for  pleasure  high 
enough  to  take  from  him  the  fever  of  his 
thought,  hoping  to  throw  off  the  inward  im- 
pulse which  pushes  him  on  to  more  and  ever 
more  labour  and  weariness.  Only  the  labour 
will  reward  him;  but  yet  he  often  goes  in 
fear  of  it,  striving  by  every  other  means  for 
ends  which  elude  him.  I  have  heard  one  la- 
ment that  beside  the  sea,  the  scale  of  a  man  is 
too  insignificant,  desiring  some  more  towering 
13  %  magnificence, 


magnificence,  some  sign  of  power  altogether 
more  god-like.  But  could  we  stretch  our 
stature  to  the  height  of  a  house  or  a  hill,  our 
scale  would  still  be  inconsiderable,  and  the 
sea  might  still  mock  at  us.  Our  boundaries 
would  be  in  no  way  enlarged,  although  our 
necessities  would  be  increased.  No,  we  are 
better  to  be  higher  than  the  primroses  and  a 
little  lower  than  a  tree.  The  giant,  like  the 
dwarf,  is  a  vagary,  and  not  to  be  reckoned 
upon;  quantity  in  a  man  is  no  guarantee  of 
manfulness.  We  are  prone,  indeed,  to  be- 
lieve the  sign  and  pass  over  the  wonder;  to 
imagine  more  mystery  in  picturesque  ap- 
pearance than  there  is  warrant  for.  That 
gorgeous  herald  who  steps  from  the  darkness 
of  nowhere  into  the  sunshine  of  the  street  is 
not  of  ordinary  design  in  our  eyes.  He  has 
hold  of  us  by  many  an  historical  tag;  yet 
when  his  work  is  over,  he  will  eat  his  dinner, 
and  his  dinner  will  be  like  dinners  which 
we  have  eaten.  Altogether  he  is  more  care- 
less of  our  raptures  than  is  decent.  The  poet 


who  wrote  those  beautiful  verses  I  have  newly 
read  to  my  little  daughter  sat  astride  a  chair 
clasping  its  back  when  I  saw  him  last;  yet 
she  asks  "Is  he  not  wonderful  to  look  at?" 
and  "He  cannot  be  living  now?"  So  are  we 
at  play  with  our  admiration,  and  the  things 
which  we  can  handle  familiarly  have  nothing 
of  the  bloom  of  romance  until  we  are  tamed 
from  our  wild  illusions  and  shown  wonder 
and  beauty  at  our  own  fireside.  We  are  the 
patient  woolgatherers  of  Fortune,  but  are 
loath  to  look  near  home  for  our  wool,  prefer- 
ring strange  roads  and  enchanted  forests  to 
search  in.  The  homely  stuff  is  too  drab,  too 
ready  at  hand  to  satisfy  us.  And  circum- 
stance, that  hinders  us  also.  What  we  would 
do  is  inconvenient  to  be  at  Our  great  pic- 
ture, our  wonderful  book — do  not  their 
beauty  and  complexity  haunt  us  at  night  when 
|  the  moonlight  is  charming  the  counterpane 
i  and  we  blink  with  the  glory  of  it  and  our  own 
;  fertile  imagining?  The  work  seems  all  but 
done.  So  many  days  of  simple  labour  with 
15  ^the 


the  brush;  so  many  neat  pages  of  foolscap 
written  over, — and  then  the  great  rush  of 
praise  and  astonishment  and  envy!  Indeed, 
so  artfully  is  the  feast  spread,  so  eagerly  swal- 
lowed, our  plan  has  melted  by  the  morning, 
our  twilit  house  of  labour  soon  broken  by 
steadily  familiar  noises.  As  with  children, 
so  with  men:  the  illusion  of  circumstance  is 
hard  to  break,  difficult  to  bend  or  shape  to  the 
right  pattern.  So  far  as  it  may  be  proved  to 
be  Divine,  we  may  account  it  the  cause  of  our 
helplessness,  getting  whatever  comfort  there 
is  in  being  beaten  by  so  large  an  adversary. 
Those  who  have  rebelled  against  temporal 
or  spiritual  authority  have  accepted  circum- 
stance as  a  man-made  product,  and  for  that 
reason  capable  of  change  by  force  or  per- 
suasion. And  assuredly  that  was  a  romantic 
day  when  a  man  could  dispute  with  one  as 
solid  as  himself,  and  block  aggression  with 
his  body.  At  least  he  did  not  dress  up  a 
difficulty  and  surround  it  with  a  halo  of  light 
not  its  own :  he  liked  to  feel  dark  places  with 
16 


a  long  sharp  spear,  and  adventure  his  wit 
against  his  enemy's.  The  lantern  of  the  mys- 
tic has  often  enough  failed  to  show  anything 
but  the  darkness,  his  furious  religious  besom 
has  left  us  still  our  cobwebs  of  poverty  and 
disease.  He  has  not  kept  faith  with  us,  nor 
used  his  powers  to  aid  us.  The  fanatic  also 
whose  eye  lights  always  jealously  upon  evil, 
whose  good  is  a  precipitate  of  evil,  a  kind  of 
waste  product,  has  little  to  give  the  world. 
Of  his  building  we  may  say  that  it  is  good  to 
fall;  and  of  his  planting,  it  is  good  to  drive 
the  plough  through.  The  energy  of  divine 
discontent  needs  to  take  a  short  way,  and  to 
come  at  the  matter  quickly.  The  tenderness 
of  the  worldly  towards  the  worldly  marks  the 
institution  as  the  proper  point  of  attack;  but 
reform  had  better  heed  etiquette  less  and  take 
personal  grounds.  The  man  beaten,  his  walls 
are  only  so  much  brick  and  mortar,  a  sound 
refuge  from  the  rain  when  wisdom  is  no 
longer  mislaid  among  its  multitude  of  coun- 
sels. When  reforms  are  discussed,  our  clarity 
17 


of  judgment  is  lost  in  a  bewilderment  of 
causes;  we  whittle  down  the  larger  law  of 
humanity  and  make  instead  ponderously 
elaborated  ones  which  take  us  from  the  true 
centre.  Politicians  and  judges  are  our  dark 
Egyptian  plague.  For  the  sake  of  groups,  as- 
sociations, classes  and  clubs,  we  fritter  away 
the  nobler  inclusiveness  of  our  world  of  men. 
We  have  machinery  which  serves  the  dolt, 
but  nothing  to  preserve  genius,  when  it  flow- 
ers among  us,  from  mortal  harassment.  The 
problem  of  bread  still  presses  upon  mankind 
after  six  thousand  years;  yet  if  I  have  bread 
because  my  neighbour  has  none,  it  must  re- 
main an  unpalatable  morsel  and  a  shame  in 
the  sight  of  God.  If,  being  well-provided,  I 
lapse  into  idleness,  and  become  a  mere 
browser  where  others  labour  and  sweat,  it 
needs  no  golden  text  to  tell  me  of  my  costly 
uselessness ;  I  know  without  statistics  that  the 
bill  must  be  met  at  one  time  or  another,  now 
or  in  a  generation,  to  the  full,  at  the  price  of 
suffering.  Like  a  tale  that  has  been  told 
if 


many  times  we  know  by  heart  how  hard  life 
is  to  live.  Balanced  between  our  spiritual 
aspiration  and  the  insecurity  of  mortal  cir- 
cumstance, we  are  in  two  minds  as  to  our  con- 
dition. Entrapped  in  the  disabilities  of  the 
flesh,  urged  on  all  the  while  by  that  same 
stream  of  life  of  which  we  often  seem  to  be 
but  spectators,  allured  at  one  moment,  set  back 
at  the  next,  how  shall  we  sufficiently  realize 
ourselves  to  be  agents  and  forces  of  the  divine^ 
It  is  hard  to  live — how  often  have  we  heard 
it  said!  Do  not  the  pulpits  all  over  the  land 
hold  up  to  us  the  grim  lesson  of  mortality, 
bidding  us  be  ''humble,  and  mindful  of 
death"!  Seeing  it  so,  how  could  we  but  set- 
tle with  a  will  into  a  spiritless  tussle  with  brief 
life — our  niggardly  and  insufficient  portion  of 
eternity?  Such  a  savage  and  heathenish  wor- 
ship of  death  might  well  invade  and  spoil  our 
zest  for  living  interests,  did  we  attend  to  it 
or  allow  ourselves  to  be  jockeyed  and  hypno- 
tized into  that  desperate  frame  of  mind;  and, 
dying  daily  in  a  foolish  sense,  become  too 
1 9  fy  ready 


ready  to  believe  that  happiness  might  some- 
how exhale  from  our  faintheartedness  and 
the  postponement  of  our  purposes.  Men  do 
not  easily  die,  just  as  they  do  not  easily  live; 
and  as  nature  makes  of  physical  decay  the 
nucleus  of  other  forms  of  life,  so  much  more 
does  the  spiritual  principle  deny  death.  A 
man  may  die  by  inches,  as  we  say;  his  powers 
fade  imperceptibly;  but  this  does  not  take 
place  without  immense  resistance.  There  is 
remorse  to  battle  with  anger,  love  to  light  up 
the  darkest  day  with  strange  spiritual  flicker- 
ings.  No  man  is  utterly  vile,  or  quite  blame- 
worthy. One  beginning  an  evil  course  has 
to  face  the  difficulty  of  the  career,  and  re- 
cover from  the  heavy  blows  which  he  invites. 
The  good  man  has  many  compensations  in 
the  conflict  with  ill ;  but  the  wicked  man  must 
find,  on  the  other  hand,  that  his  good  is  ever 
in  rebellion  against  destruction — that  life  is 
tenacious  and  will  fight  from  stronghold  to 
stronghold  and  inch  by  inch  for  possession. 
.What  abstinence  will  not  do,  satiety  will  at- 
20 


tempt;  what  satiety  does  not  win  over,  weari- 
ness and  sickness  may.  The  man  is  being 
fought  by  enemies  whom  he  knows  naught  of, 
all  the  farce  of  nature's  first  law  being  then 
called  into  operation.  He  is  the  product  of  the 
ages,  and  death  shall  not  steal  him  easily  away, 
with  only  his  single  will  to  favour  the  adven- 
ture. In  our  divine  discontent  we  must  put 
away  the  grisly  garnishments  and  decorations 
which  are  the  emblem  of  a  decadent  imagina- 
tion. Not  false  peace,  but  a  sword  will  match 
the  disposition  of  the  mind.  Not  teaching 
that  is  jaundiced,  not  laws  nor  associations  so 
long  as  they  do  not  extend  or  preserve  the 
sphere  of  human  uselessness,  so  long  as  they 
limit  and  have  within  them  no  passion  for 
service.  None  of  these  man-made  conditions 
will  bear  scrutiny;  for  the  critical  spirit  im- 
plies not  merely  bias  but  constructiveness  also 
with  reference  to  a  more  divine  pattern.  We 
are  not  to  be  so  careful  to  condemn  the  deed : 
a  solemn  abstraction  looms  behind  its  paltry 
actual  counterpart.  The  unmistakable  vision 
21 


of  right  things  defeats  all  special-pleading 
which  seeks  to  divert  the  attention  from 
wrong  conceptions  of  right.  The  law  or  the 
institution  may  be  what  it  cares  to  be,  so  long 
as  our  minds  are  clear  and  we  are  not  de- 
ceived. There  must  always  remain  those 
who,  while  seeming  to  quench  the  flame  with 
sand,  still  lead  on  towards  the  sun ;  those  idol- 
breakers  who  cannot  bear  that  mankind  shall 
fill  its  eyes  with  unbeautiful  form,  and  so  must 
ever  break  and  ever  remodel  the  likeness  of 
the  gods.  In  that  high  cause  man  shares  the 
burden  of  the  creational  mind.  Set  in  Time 
and  Change,  he  yet  derives  from  beyond  the 
measure  of  Time,  and  has  a  fixity  which  vicis- 
situde can  hardly  disturb  out  of  its  calm. 
The  pulsation  of  life,  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
tides,  night  and  day,  the  whole  rhythmic  tune 
of  the  Universe,  the  quick  heart-beat  respond- 
ing and  corresponding — these  are  all  with  ref- 
erence to  the  same  fixed  centre,  all  evidences 
of  friction  and  contrariety  from  which  unity, 

22 


wholeness,  harmony  are  evolved.    They  are 
the  milk  of  God 

*  It  is  as  though  the  Creator,  dreaming  in 
the  twilight  of  Heaven,  had  paused  a  little 
to  search  the  chambers  of  His  mind,  and  as 
the  divine  thought  flashed,  the  Universe  with 
its  elaborately  interwoven  pattern  of  life  un- 
folded itself  to  be  the  test  and  the  revelation. 
The  one  thought,  the  atonement,  has  to  be 
fashioned  from  the  interaction  of  two 
thoughts.  Out  of  twilight  is  the  sun  ripened, 
out  of  doubt  comes  faith,  by  sorrow  knowl- 
edge. Through  the  maze  of  evolution  God 
may  be  said  to  test  His  mind,  to  resolve  His 
moment  of  divine  discontent.  The  states 
of  innocence  and  experience,  the  principles  of 
good  and  evil  are  both  essential  to  that  which 
they  are  in  reference  to,  to  the  fixity  they  in- 
evitably discover  or  evolve.  Thus  calling 
man  from  the  dust,  as  He  had  wrought  form 
from  out  the  elemental  chaotic  cloud,  God 
made  him  in  His  image  and  put  him  from  the 
23  *  Garden 


Garden  of  Contentment  into  an  environment 
of  material  things  and  the  fact  of  experience. 
Framed  and  held  within  tremendous  primi- 
tive elements,  shut  in  by  day  and  night,  the 
graciousness  and  gloom  of  more  spacious 
moods,  man  is  conditioned  by  the  unerring 
physical  law;  but  lit  also  by  the  light  of  divine 
consciousness,  the  fire  which  is  all  life  and 
breath  and  all  unresting  intelligence  too. 
Through  what  obscure  forms  of  evolution 
mankind  has  been  rehearsed  in  the  divine 
dream  is  lost  to  any  reckoning  of  ours  in  the 
sheer  scale  of  Space  and  Duration.  Our  lit- 
tle foot-rule  by  which  we  measure,  our  scien- 
tific scales  for  weighing,  still  leave  us  the 
knowledge  that  the  measure  runs  out  on  all 
sides  and  that  the  facts  are  beyond  compre- 
hension. Yet  if  God's  thought  glitters  as 
we  suppose  with  this  rich  enchantment,  if  the 
creative  effort  takes  this  shape  to  explore  the 
nooks  and  crannies  of  material  existence,  we 
being  its  tools  and  instruments — if  this  be  a 
true  figure  of  life's  origin,  may  we  not  also 
24 


be  seen  to  pass  on  the  stream  of  life,  and  re- 
flect what  deeds  we  do  upon  another  race  in 
some  distant  star  whose  dial  mirrors  our 
minds  among  the  mists  of  Space?  We  may 
not  guess  what  wars  and  darkness  our  treason 
and  unfaith  bring  to  pass.  So  immense  are 
we  when  our  hands  are  lifted  to  grope  along 
the  boundaries  of  this  fleshly  territory  and 
out  into  the  firmament  beyond;  yet  so  in- 
significant in  the  knowledge  that  the  sum  and 
extent  of  one  world's  deed  renders  our  wilful- 
ness  and  obedience  of  identical  purport,  our 
good  and  ill  no  more  than  a  minute  whimsical 
diversity  in  the  pattern  of  God's  mantle.  The 
moralists  have  never  been  able  to  find  a  clue 
to  the  varying  needs  of  men;  indeed,  while  ap- 
portioning blame  which  is  naught  but  the 
bestowal  of  a  name  or  a  written  tally,  they 
have  not  even  discriminated  between  plain 
effects  and  causes.  The  human  mind  is  far 
too  diverse  and  delicate  to  be  mended  by  re- 
buke if  it  be  no  more  than  rebuke.  Thus  the 
law  set  to  punish  is  incapable  of  constructive 
25  %  remedy, 


remedy,  because  the  plain  rogue,  its  victim, 
is  not  the  real  offender  against  the  community. 
The  ruffian  who  looks  what  he  is  may  be  a  re- 
freshing survival  from  a  more  direct  and  man- 
ful condition  than  this  dull  one  of  taxpayers 
and  rate-collectors  and  retired  colonels;  at 
least  he  deceives  nobody.  What  legal  or 
other  mode  or  mind  has  any  right  to  so  ar- 
rogant and  racial  an  ascendancy?  The  polite 
fraud  of  the  intellect,  the  subtle  false-dealing 
of  half-truth  and  mental  corruption — these  are 
the  spoilers,  that  go  free.  Yet  the  choice  of 
rulers  and  lawgivers  is  difficult:  to  some  extent 
the  world  must  trust  to  friction,  to  action  and 
reaction,  even  if  only  antagonism  between  am- 
bitions and  interests,  until  there  is  wrought 
the  nobler  ideal  of  service  and  disinterest,  if 
this  may  derive  from  such  unlikely  parentage. 
Our  task  is  at  best  but  a  rough-hewing,  guided 
to  determine  difficult  points  of  conduct  by  the 
aggregate  of  human  wisdom  named  Truth. 
And  let  us  not  despise  our  little  art  of  life, 
but  make  of  it  this  much  more  than  an  exer- 
26 


cise  in  a  witty  learning  of  how  to  stand  well 
with  men  that  it  shall  respond  to  impulses 
which  inwardly  stir  us  to  compass  deeds  un- 
like those  already  hardened  and  deadened  into 
habit.  Or  if  truly  we  ought  to  repudiate 
mental  sagacity  with  its  whole  desire  to  prove 
the  next  event  by  the  last,  and  to  stand  bar- 
gaining for  other  terms  and  tools;  if  this  is 
of  the  Devil  and  from  darkness,  as  some  de- 
clare, then  let  it  be  rejected  utterly.  But  in 
cutting  ourselves  adrift  from  the  entangle- 
ment, we  must  ask  the  question  plainly,  and 
know  how  much  or  how  little  we  lay  upon 
ourselves,  adventuring,  as  we  then  are  com- 
pelled to,  upon  uncharted  regions.  That 
one  is  not  entirely  foolish  who  takes  a  bold 
stand  upon  the  human  position  and  elects  to 
carve  out  a  delicate  gracious  figure;  who  of 
mortal  clay  fashions  a  beautiful  proportion- 
ate living  man,  and  then  calls  aloud  for  the 
high  tests  of  reason  and  daylight  upon  the 
work.  Such  a  vigorous  grip  of  reality  is 
more  acceptable  than  mystic  rumblings  which 
27  %  serve 


serve  to  betray  indecision  and  unfaith  rather 
than  to  reveal  the  power  to  handle  spiritual 
things.  In  no  sense  does  a  worship  of  divine 
ancestry  preclude  a  proper  care  for  tangible 
human  revelation ;  it  leads  the  more  certainly 
to  an  increased  interest  in  man  and  the  study 
of  mankind.  Yet  in  each  heresy  we  picture 
the  destruction  of  the  angelic  host,  so  tremu- 
lous are  we,  so  ungenerous  to  our  friend  who 
from  divergency  of  invention  we  call  foe,  and 
at  whose  discomfiture  we  are  willing  to  con- 
nive. In  such  a  temper  the  holy  warfare  of 
puritanism  was  launched  against  the  arts, 
whose  activity  has  survived  the  utmost,  and 
whose  decision  to  go  the  way  of  art,  which 
is  also  the  way  of  nature,  impels  the  artist  to 
aim  at  perfecting  one  thing  and  one  man  at 
a  time,  and  to  let  just  expression  be  its  own 
missioner.  To  him  the  fitness  of  his  work  is 
of  importance  first  and  last.  In  that  is  em- 
bedded all  the  lesson  he  has  to  teach ;  for  his 
mind  is  incurious  as  to  your  conversion.  And 
why  should  he  labour  with  the  indeterminable 
28 


factors  of  your  mind,  or  spoil  the  simple  sub- 
tle implication  of  right  vision  and  interpreta- 
tion? The  poet  also — do  you  require  the 
extravagance  of  Moody  and  Sankey,  like  some 
unpromising  propaganda  to  weigh  down  and 
break  his  delicate  emotional  spell?  It  cannot 
be.  Art  delights  in  diversity,  it  propagates 
the  fine  spirit  of  humanity,  and  praises  life. 
And  in  the  flesh  we  cannot  but  seek  to  build 
our  House  of  Life  true  in  point  of  art,  right 
with  the  conditions  laid  upon  us.  The  hard 
varying  grain  of  circumstance  yields  the  ma- 
terial with  which  we  are  at  leave  to  build 
heroically  if  we  will;  yet  must  we  be  eager 
to  require  relevance  in  our  undertakings  and 
not  account  loss  so  bitterly.  The  stakes  are 
not  well  laid  for  a  merely  tolerable  existence 
and  a  dislocated  diligence.  By  no  means 
shall  we  consent  to  sell  ourselves  cheaply,  nor 
shall  our  wives  or  children  be,  by  consent  or 
repute,  the  instrument  of  our  confusion.  It 
is  too  precarious  a  livelihood  which  imperils 
the  soul  or  stays  it  at  gentility.  "I  who  am 
29  ^  young," 


young,"  says  one,  "must  first  know  my  own 
task  ere  I  can  promise  diligence  in  it.  At  the 
beginning  your  inducements,  your  decorations 
and  pensions  have  little  charm  for  me.  Let 
me  make  my  desire  otherwise  in  service,  my 
reward  in  happiness."  May  we  claim  so 
great  a  prize?  Life  is  compared  to  a  lottery; 
but  how  much  more  like  a  lottery  it  is  as  rec- 
ommended by  some!  We  are  admonished  to 
make  haste,  and  be  in  time;  the  prizes  are 
guaranteed  by  government  statute;  there  are 
few  blanks.  Everywhere  are  we  bidden  to 
know  that  ours  is  a  duty  of  no  especial  con- 
sequence, mere  pawns,  mere  worms  as  we 
are!  What  our  virtue,  what  our  pence,  in  so 
large  a  cast?  The  lottery-mongers  are  in  the 
saddle — for  us  the  chances  of  the  sport,  the 
toilsome  wayfaring;  for  them  the  power, 
the  safe  assurance.  We  hardly  dream,  so 
great  is  the  charm  of  this  noble  plan,  that  in 
fact  we  need  no  official  to  direct  the  business 
at  all.  Our  belief  is  altogether  better:  let 
him  who  must  for  his  soul's  ripening  think 
30 


ill;  but  for  us  the  glittering  humour  of  a  day 
in  the  world.  We  will  take  no  sides  against 
it.  Do  we  not,  indeed,  press  forward  the 
claims  of  Heaven  so  soon  as  it  overflows  the 
earth,  ill-content  to  sit  recording  events  in  a 
dull  style?  The  clash  and  friction  are  fiercest 
when  our  talk  is  of  influence:  men  hate  the  re- 
birth which  we  insist  upon,  and  afterwards 
feeling  the  glow  of  the  healing  touch  which 
has  cured  their  contentment,  they  will  soon 
leave  their  sick-bed  and  come  into  the  open 
and  turn  the  aureate  earth  with  a  strong  hand 
and  an  earnest  heart.  Happy  then  is  he  in 
our  company,  being  content  in  the  place  in 
which  he  is,  not  too  careful  of  divine  proc- 
esses that  light  and  excite,  to  value  greatly 
the  trumpery  of  material  possession  whose 
squareness  and  weight  prove  its  worth  the 
more  substantially  unimportant.  Divine  dis- 
content is  no  passive  virtue,  hardly  heeding 
the  things  which  are  praiseworthy,  since  it 
has  happiness  sown  in  with  it.  Exultingly 
we  cry  "The  work  is  finished,"  but  in  secret 
3 1  %  we 


we  mourn  the  loss  of  it.  Again  we 
bend  to  laborious  days  and  suffer  the  hot 
tide  of  mental  effort  to  pass  over  us.  We 
are  tormented,  and  no  task,  however  easy 
it  looks  at  the  beginning,  lets  us  off  one 
iota;  yet  filled  to  the  brim  with  rich 
surmise,  all  our  faculties  aroused,  we  go 
among  men  with  the  light  upon  our  faces  like 
the  prophets  of  old  who,  on  steep  crags  which 
pierced  the  heavens,  communed  with  God. 
Gifted  with  divine  discontent,  we  have  ever 
an  urgent  call  to  be  on  with  the  story,  to  reach 
further,  voyage  longer,  search  deeper;  and, 
more,  to  have  capacity  for  failure  and  fatigue. 
In  the  presence  of  anger,  the  contented  man 
avails  little,  because  he  has  too  long  been  at- 
tuned to  pleasing  scenes,  and  courage  has  been 
stolen  out  of  his  bones :  he  cannot  be  debonair; 
his  spirit  has  no  swiftness  or  vehemence  when 
there  is  the  need.  The  life  of  one  is  always 
strange  to  another,  however;  none  are  to  the 
full  what  we  think.  I  remember  wondering 
as  a  child  whether  all  the  houses  were  like 
32 


the  one  in  which  I  lived,  and  if  the  orderly 
procession  of  duties,  of  breakfast  and  dinner 
and  tea,  was  the  same  all  along  the  street  and 
in  the  mysterious  detached  houses  also  whose 
superior  gables  and  greenhouses  seemed  to  de- 
part rather  arrogantly  from  the  prevailing 
custom  of  the  neighbourhood.  On  the  whole 
I  was  inclined  to  favour  the  idea  that  behind 
some  of  those  doors  far  more  wonderful 
things  happened  than  even  the  happiest  of 
our  own:  learning  easier  got,  music  not  ended 
so  soon,  love  and  riches  always  renewed  with 
daily  surprise.  And  these  I  still  determine 
as  of  the  nature  of  heaven.  The  advantageous 
thing  still  shapes  the  divine,  when  seen  with 
the  clear  eyes  of  a  child.  Popular  philosophy 
imagines  man  as  though  he  were  of  straw,  and 
life  fixed  either  at  the  point  of  dismal  failure 
or  at  glittering  success,  to  be  lost  straightway 
or  gained  over  at  a  stroke.  The  youth,  there- 
fore, not  having  been  taught  to  require  spirit- 
ual embodiment,  and  still  perhaps  a  little  held 
by  the  conception  of  remote  Belief,  is  apt  to 
33  *feU 


fall  early  into  despair  of  ever  reconciling  what 
he  divines  and  what  he  sees.  Having  taken  a 
heroic  pattern  to  heart,  he  soon  accounts  it 
true  that  the  propitious  time  is  not  yet.  It 
may  be  his  likeness  to  the  antique  hero  is  a 
little  flimsy  and  unfinished,  and  the  rough 
manners  of  the  world  not  entirely  to  blame 
for  flinging  pellets  at  it.  Perhaps  the  youth 
depends  too  much  upon  the  mastery  of  the 
original,  and  too  little  upon  his  own  individ- 
ual artistry:  whatever  the  reason,  the  hero- 
worshipper  is  not  identical  with  the  hero  in 
mind  or  work;  for  admiration  has  to  flatter 
by  labour,  imitation  grow  into  spiritual  emu- 
lation. Where  did  the  man  hear  so  evil  a 
report  of  the  world  that  he  must  set  himself 
in  a  place  apart?  If  from  his  divine  self,  it 
has  been  only  partially  posted  up  in  the  news. 
Nevertheless  he  is  favoured,  and  his  cause  ad- 
vanced by  all  men;  his  golden  nimbus  finds 
reflection  in  their  hearts,  and  it  is  as  true  to- 
day as  ever  to  say  that  the  uplifting  of  one  soul 
will  draw  all  men.  The  world  is  yet  a  hard 
34 


nursery  full  of  complicated  toys  and  noisy  dis- 
tractions. We  are  by  turns  the  man  we  de- 
spised, so  learning  by  no  mere  disparagement 
to  attain  mastery  of  our  own  share  of  the  per- 
fect gifts.  For  the  making  of  a  fine  nature  is 
not  by  the  means  that  we  guess.  In  youth  we 
love  the  solitary  pedestal,  the  memorial  of 
our  preconceived  ideas,  and  shiver  for  the 
preservation  of  our  own  ascendancy  most  of 
all.  And  perchance  we  have  got  to  let  it  all 
go  and  to  stand  the  strain  of  having  nothing 
but  the  stars  and  the  sea  and  the  deep  places, 
a  realm  of  infinite  mysterious  fortune.  Ex- 
cellence in  our  craft  requires  the  utmost 
beauty  of  our  soul,  the  real  fitness  for  manful 
life  and  effort.  Be  sure  one  who  is  unfit  for 
life  is  not  fit  for  immortality.  The  art  of  liv- 
ing is  an  applied  art  in  which  our  learning 
will  hinder  as  greatly  as  it  helps.  We  forsake 
one  precedent  only  to  find  that  some  one  has 
been  before  us  and  we  are  at  another  unknow- 
ingly. Thus  are  we  vexed,  but  march  on- 
wards leaving  maybe  a  deal  of  baggage 
35  §3  littered 


littered  along  the  road  to  be  a  biddance  to 
others  who  travel  after.  To  be  right  with  a 
high  conception  of  reality,  we  must  go  with 
the  stubborn  gaiety  of  the  artist;  and,  like  as 
not,  we  are  hardly  recommended  by  a  display 
of  the  familiar  acceptable  virtues.  A  ship  is 
designed  to  live  upon  the  waters ;  but  an  archi- 
tect of  ships  is  not  free  to  reckon  without  the 
storm  in  his  calculation  of  resistance  and 
buoyancy.  So  we  may  not  hazard  a  graceful 
theory  of  fair  weather  which  the  first  blast 
would  overturn:  our  spirit  must  penetrate  the 
fact  and  light  it  with  still  unvexed  faith. 
Every  road  does  not  wind  the  same  way  to 
the  forest  and  the  hill,  but  where  lonely  paths 
intersect  among  the  prickly  gorse,  and  the 
high  roads  cross  upon  the  plain,  we  meet  our 
fellow-travellers  and  have  hail  and  farewell. 
And  presently  that  old  burden,  shouldered 
unwillingly  at  the  inn,  weighs  not  so  heavily, 
because  we  have  grown  to  the  knowledge  that 
the  errand  upon  which  we  are  sent  far  exceeds 
our  first  dream  of  industry  as  bridging  the 

36 


space  between  need  and  reward;  that  in  fact 
our  toil  goes  less  to  gain  which  we  shall  be 
able  to  spend  in  fine  linen  or  ornament,  and 
more  to  the  making  of  a  man  whose  bravery 
supersedes  every  such  outward  vanity.  Being 
fit,  we  shall  use  all  these,  perhaps;  but  no 
longer  to  the  end  that  our  shortcomings  are 
hidden  and  glossed  over,  no  more  as  make- 
weight for  gaiety  which  is  not  true  to  the  tem- 
per of  our  minds.  The  assemblage  of  quali- 
ties most  admirable  to  us  go  to  the  making  of 
the  man  who  is  our  pattern  and  ideal.  Him 
we  hold  in  regard  and  remember  even  when 
the  mirror  is  put  away  and  we  forget  what 
manner  of  men  we  are  in  the  flesh,  perceiv- 
ing, though  dimly  enough,  the  divine  corre- 
sponding likeness  of  our  earthly  being.  The 
world  also  is  created  newly  each  time  that 
we  see  beyond  its  pain  and  complexity,  and 
becomes  radiant  with  the  aura  of  exceeding 
life,  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  a 
plenty  of  spiritual  grace  poured  out.  Each 
morning  is  the  gift  of  a  new  day  which  it  were 
37  flfc  shame 


shame  to  break  with  anger;  and  if  with  sim- 
ple hearts  like  the  hearts  of  children,  we  peo- 
ple the  night  part  with  beings  more  timid 
than  our  daytime  selves,  part  with  creatures 
of  dark  moth-like  habit  whose  call  and  touch 
upon  our  sense  is  fearful  and  strange  and 
beautiful  beyond  forsaking,  that  holds  us  also, 
a  little  awed  by  its  magnificent  serenity, 
moved  by  the  thought  that  we  must  lie  prone 
in  the  keeping  of  Him  who  sleeps  not.  Age 
does  not  see  with  the  same  eyes  as  the  youth 
still  in  the  trail  of  cloud  and  glory;  it  is  ac- 
customed, has  patience.  But  if  age  has  not 
let  slip  the  light  and  dulled  its  heat  to  a  brit- 
tle grey  ash,  itself  but  a  burnt-out  trace  of  a 
fire  that  once  warmed  and  cheered,  it  is  to  be 
likened  to  no  consuming  restless  youth;  for 
it  is  as  tried  gold  which  will  buy  us  wisdom's 
pearl.  Certain  old  country-folk  there  are 
whom  I  have  seen  whose  faces  are  sweet  be- 
yond words,  certain  old  fishermen  too  whose 
eyes  are  full  of  that  same  wonder  which  chil- 
dren wake  with,  having  taken  from  beyond 

38 


the  sea's  far  rim  the  colour  of  the  same  dream. 
But  oftenest,  thinking  of  age,  do  I  visit  a  small 
house  which  is  a  good  half-day's  journey  from 
here,  and  blame  whatsoever  business  it  may 
be  which  takes  me  within  reach  of  it  and  yet 
forbids  the  little  more  which  would  find  me 
safely  there.'  Sometimes  the  church-bells  re- 
proach me  a  little  when  mother  and  daughter 
go  out  and  leave  me  alone  among  the  carved 
and  painted  trophies  from  many  lands  which 
fill  the  rooms.  These  I  look  at  rather  sadly, 
wondering  at  the  stillness  which  is  in  this 
house,  and  will  one  day  be  in  mine,  after  the 
children  are  grown  and  gone  away.  Perhaps 
they  go  to  seek  peace  itself,  and  it  is  here  in 
their  absence.  Who  knows  what  treasure  it 
was  that  they  went  in  search  of,  when  they 
cannot  tell  the  secret  themselves?  The  pass- 
ing stranger  will  not  heed  this  house:  it  is 
hidden  enough  from  curious  eyes  by  being 
like  its  fellows;  yet  within  it  are  these  relics, 
this  drift  of  restless  lives.  And  here  is  the 
mother  and  the  daughter  who  ministers  joy- 
39  %  fully 


fully  to  her  at  all  times,  and  here  also,  per- 
vading the  stillness,  soothing  and  hushing  all 
regret  and  pain,  softening  every  sorrow  and 
anxiety,  is  the  peace  which  passeth  under- 
standing. 

%  It  may  be  that  we  turn  to  age  for  some- 
thing of  the  contemplative  part  to  still  us  and 
stay  us,  for  fixity  of  purpose,  moral  resolution. 
However  that  may  be,  it  is  sure  that  to  youth 
we  turn  also  to  pick  up  the  golden  threads  we 
have  lost  on  the  way.  Who  is  there  who  does 
not  sometimes  fold  back  the  veil  and  disclose 
the  enchanted  daybreak  of  love,  or  the  first 
promise  of  achievement?  Who  has  not  be- 
held the  massy  gloom  of  ill-fortune  melt  be- 
fore a  luminous  moment  when  the  effort  of 
youth  linked  itself  to  more  mature  thought 
and  quickened  the  pulse  with  livelier  energy 
and  more  impetuous  desire?  So  at  least  may 
we  reach  and  stoop,  and  always  gather  for 
the  present  new  uses  for  things  past  and  states 
to  come. 

*fc  A  merchant  who  had  been  successful  and 
40 


was  spending  the  remaining  years  of  his  life 
in  leisure  desired  his  sons  to  seek  his  advice  in 
all  perplexing  matters;  for,  said  he:  "I  have 
passed  through  them,  and  shall  be  able  to 
advise  you  so  well  that  you  need  fall  into  no 
errors  such  as  I  have  fallen  and  without  me 
you  must  fall  into.  Be  attentive  to  my 
counsel,  and  more  speedily  than  I  you  shall 
gain  success  and  be  in  honour  and  repute. 
The  vexations,  delays,  and  losses  which  have 
hindered  and  perplexed  me  need  be  of  no 
hurt  to  you,  since  you  may  so  readily  escape 
them."  Against  such  friendly  fathering, 
however,  many  enemies  are  ranged.  The 
battle  is  to  the  strong,  at  whose  side  and  in 
whose  service  youth  is  enrolled.  The  battle 
for  the  strong  and  the  strong  for  it,  and  men 
not  to  be  reckoned  upon  so  readily,  nor  led  so 
tamely.  If  youth  could  indeed  be  so  guided, 
a  textbook  would  suffice  to  stay  us,  and  pro- 
vide every  one  a  competency.  And  thus 
shuffled  out  of  harm's  way,  the  complacency 
of  the  world  would  cry  aloud  for  a  strong 
41 


man  of  blood,  or  hatred,  or  discontent  mighty 
enough  to  break  the  drowsy  spell.  Youth 
with  wiser  carelessness  throws  down  its  life 
and  the  world  as  a  stake;  action  exhilarates 
it,  each  new  difficulty  meeting  with  deeper 
breathing  and  yet  more  powerfully  strung 
effort.  To  youth  the  time  has  not  come  when 
with  duller  sense  the  man  feels  for  ways  of 
escape,  having  failed  and  lost  heart.  No  gift, 
moreover,  can  have  in  it  either  the  discipline 
or  the  charm  of  what  is  the  due  and  the  shin- 
ing prize  of  a  noble  and  courageous  soldier. 
Content  is  only  won  through  discontent;  ease 
of  mind  and  leisure  for  the  body  are  not  to  be 
handed  like  a  packet  across  the  table.  Each 
new  generation,  also,  has  its  peculiar  fund  of 
inspiration,  and  in  that  regard  history  can 
teach  no  lesson  which  is  not  already  in  full 
view  within  the  span  of  one  thoughtful  mind. 
We  shape  to  a  man,  but  what  we  do  reacts 
upon  the  world;  we  are  poor,  but  powerful 
also,  and  must  either  sink  in  the  one  sort  or 
rise  in  the  other.  A  too  complicated  care  for 
42 


opinion  in  one  eager  to  test  himself  against 
society  may  invite  much  of  the  barbarity  and 
savagery  of  primitive  cruelty;  but  it  remains 
true  also  that  the  wheels  and  cogs  need  not 
engage  us.  If  the  world  can  provide  us  with 
our  best,  be  sure  it  has  the  power  to  oppose 
our  best  and  frustrate  it  or  whittle  it  away 
harmlessly  if  it  so  wish.  Yet  to  the  young  man 
who  comes  with  too  many  poetic  observations 
I  say:  "I  care  not  what  skyey  mansions  your 
ideals  decorate  if  they  are  of  no  use  to  daily 
life  in  the  workshop,  in  the  lane,  in  the  count- 
ing-house. Were  it  truly  an  ideal  which  you 
would  show  us,  go  and  with  skilful  hand  carve 
it  ethereally  in  material  substance.  Master 
the  verse,  the  chisel,  the  pen;  give  to  your 
spiritual  part  the  fine  integrity  of  the  ma- 
terial; build  the  bridge  which  will  let  man- 
kind share  with  you  the  vision  you  boast  of." 
One  of  the  would-be  founders  of  a  new  ascetic 
heroic  system  spoke  of  it  to  a  certain  great 
fellow  whose  support  he  was  soliciting, 
whereupon  he  was  asked  the  question:  "But 
43 


why,  if  you  prohibit  the  smoking  of  tobacco, 
are  your  own  fingers  stained  with  nicotine?" 
Need  I  say  that  his  reply:  "Oh,  we  have  not 
begun  yet"  completely  shattered  the  fragile 
illusion,  and  rendered  his  errand  as  fruitless 
as  afterwards  the  whole  cult  proved  to  be? 
No,  we  require  a  greater  valour  to  invite  our 
interest  and  call  us  out  of  our  present  habit; 
the  sparkling  heady  wine  must  not  turn  into 
ditchwater  so  soon  as  we  prepare  to  drink  of 
it.  The  "common  day"  starts  early  with 
tremendous  meanings  around  us,  so  widely 
spread  as  it  is  over  the  earth.  We  find  our- 
selves lifted  in  our  own  conceit  by  the  subtle 
comparison.  With  hardly  an  effort  the  whole 
horizon  is  ours,  and  conquest  easy  enough  to 
be  idly  recommended  elsewhere.  And  some 
will  argue  it  the  more  prosaic  than  ever  it 
was,  as  though  predestined  to  defeat  every 
noble  aspiration;  we  and  the  world  both  vil- 
lainous of  necessity,  by  some  fate  beyond  our 
mending  bequeathed  to  sin  and  ruin.  But  I 
set  myself  against  the  report,  and  if  upon 
44 


that  reckoning  any  sort  of  belief  is  founded, 
put  it  from  my  mind  without  a  qualm;  for 
the  claims  which  it  will  make  can  be  no 
sounder  than  the  dismal  heresy  upon  which 
it  is  built.  As  with  evil,  so  with  good,  men 
hypnotize  themselves.  They  hide  from  their 
sight  all  save  those  things  which  are  to  their 
standard  of  good  and  thus  turn  a  counterfeit 
complacency  uppermost,  to  the  end  that  they 
be  not  shocked  or  put-about  by  appearances 
not  within  their  philosophy.  Some  one  has 
written:  "The  Author  of  Creation  is  the  only 
author  who  is  supposed  to  be  flattered  by 
disparagement  of  his  works."  Set  a  light  to 
naphtha,  and  it  will  burn  and  maybe  fire  a 
house  or  a  ship ;  let  loose  the  waters  and  they 
will  spoil;  infect  with  disease,  and  it  will  act 
after  the  manner  of  its  sort  and  no  other. 
The  price  of  knowledge  is  heavy,  but  the  law 
remains  and  must  remain  if  the  day  is  to 
succeed  the  night  and  reason  stay  within  man- 
kind. Watch  the  shadow  cast  upon  the  wall 
by  a  projecting  moulding,  by  a  picture-frame 
45  ^'or 


cr  a  lintel-post:  it  is  true  to  the  angle  of  the 
light,  to  every  curve  and  variation  of  form. 
A  flicker  of  firelight  from  another  direction 
will  fight  to  make  its  light  and  its  shadow, 
tempering  the  stronger  shadow  exactly  ac- 
cording to  its  force  and  colour.  For  a  mo- 
ment there  is  the  hint  of  a  new  figure,  and  as 
the  flame  dies,  the  mastering  light  mends  its 
work.  It  is  all  logical  and  accountable,  con- 
summately precise  and  tireless,  and  is  a  source 
of  exceeding  joy  to  those  who  nurse  no  desire 
for  law  less  absolute  and  inscrutable,  but 
rather,  able  in  little  matters  to  trace  its  oper- 
ation, find  in  it  always  more  and  more  rapture 
and  excitement.  To  what  we  know,  we  add 
what  we  can  divine  of  the  unknown  in  order 
to  find  worthy  beliefs,  or  else,  existing  in 
despite  of  the  bodying  element,  we  praise  the 
soul  and  despise  the  body,  and  by  so  much  for- 
bid the  dream  to  cross  the  gulf.  The  dream 
and  the  deed,  as  over  a  gulf,  beckon  and 
correspond;  spirit  and  body  utterly  friendly 
and  interchangeable,  and  perception  and  sen- 


sation  with  no  news  that  wars  against  our 
praise  of  the  God  who  made  our  beautiful 
orderly  bodies  and  who  set  us  in  this  en- 
chanted land.  That  one  attends  no  less  to 
vision  who  is  scrupulous  of  the  material  in 
which  he  works,  knowing  that  mastery  lies 
first  in  obedience,  and  service  rests  with  under- 
standing. For  him  no  vain  bias  against  solid 
material  and  hard  fact — does  not  his  soul  re- 
appear shiningly  in  these  when  he  has  made 
them  his  servants !  The  presence  of  the  spirit- 
ual is  not,  on  the  other  hand,  shown  forth  by 
the  failure  of  tangible  expression;  piety  affect- 
ing to  address  the  world  in  terms  already 
within  knowledge,  with  no  command  of  the 
language  to  forward  it,  is  not  merely  materi- 
ally incompetent,  but  spiritually  incompetent. 
Writing  of  this  I  have  especially  in  mind  cer- 
tain psychic  pictures  which  are  supposed  to 
suggest  important  wanderings  of  the  human 
consciousness ;  but  there  are  many  people  who 
bear  ill-done  testimony  to  beliefs  which  jut 
out  far  beyond  their  grasp  of  form  into  un- 
47  <fe  pleasant 


pleasant  chaotic  darkness.  It  is,  of  course, 
an  elementary  fact  that  command  of  form  is 
more  arduously  gotten  than  are  the  thoughts 
which  remain  locked  within  the  mind,  grop- 
ing, as  it  were,  for  a  way  of  escape  into  other 
friendly  minds,  for  the  book,  the  marble,  the 
music — whichever  of  these  is  best  fitting. 
$lx  In  what  manner  shall  a  theory  of  educa- 
tion be  stated  which  will  drive  us  past  our  dis- 
content at  a  proper  pace,  and  set  us  free 
without  the  encumberment  of  so  much  that 
is  stated  but  not  related?  The  study  of  exist- 
ing complications  is  of  no  interest  to  our 
natural  condition.  We  juggle  with  memory, 
and  although  we  may  say  of  the  mass  and  bulk 
of  books:  "This  also  Life;  memorial  to  for- 
getfulness" — the  real  substance  of  education 
is  at  first  hand,  and  that  which  we  learn  when 
we  play  truant  of  most  value  to  us.  Books  of 
information  exhale  a  musty  aroma  very  early, 
like  mouldy  grain  kept  too  long  in  the  granary. 
We  prepare  to  live,  are  always  anxious  on  a 
lower  plane  than  our  true  one.  At  least  we 


believe  our  ideals  are  sanitary;  if  we  are  un- 
comfortable and  hedged  about  with  cleanli- 
ness, we  are  safe  in  our  worship  of 
rudimentary  functions.  Mere  lacing  and 
buttoning  eat  up  our  days.  There  is  no  praise 
in  the  struggle :  virtue  is  hardly  rewarded  for 
so  much  trouble;  for,  intent  upon  a  creed  or 
an  elaboration  of  etiquette,  we  create  new  vices 
so  that  there  may  be  more  and  yet  more  deli- 
cate shades  of  virtue.  Can  we  by  no  effort 
cleanse  and  wash  away  the  past  once  and  for 
all,  or  set  apart  a  day  in  each  year  on  which 
to  bathe  and  anoint  and  re-create  ourselves, 
beginning  a  new  year,  being  ourselves  re- 
newed? The  scholar,  childlike  and  bland 
though  he  be,  has  settled  firmly  upon  the  world 
of  men.  In  an  awed  voice  he  reads  us  the 
lesson  from  the  past  The  poet,  hearing, 
writes;  but  it  is  of  Helen  of  Troy,  and  our 
delight  is  tempered  always  because  we  must 
buy  and  read  books  which  are  already  dead  of 
many  tortures.  The  painter,  hearing,  paints 
Venus,  shall  we  say,  torturing  his  unlettered 
49  %  mind 


mind  at  the  story.  The  architect,  hearing, 
designs  another  Gothic  church;  for  is  it  not 
true  that  although  we  are  not  Gothic,  the 
Gothic  is  most  praiseworthy?  And  so  the 
musician  with  Bninnhilde  or  another;  and  so 
everybody  who  is  in  need  of  a  tag  or  an  opiate. 
To-day  my  newspaper  contains  sagacious 
views  upon  the  Universities  as  a  training- 
ground  for  men  of  business.  Perhaps  the 
City  will  swallow  up  the  scholar;  at  least  I 
am  comforted  in  the  thought  that  the  scholar 
must  be  eased  from  his  present  situation,  or 
•our  mood  mended.  We  see  Time  in  perspec- 
tive, are  long-sighted.  The  beauty  of  this 
hour  and  place  we  will  not  see  till  the  ines- 
sential mortal  part  has  sunk  away  and  we  are 
able  to  focus  justly  our  present  fortunes. 
Hurt,  we  have  forgotten  long  ago  the  circum- 
stance of  it,  but  go  a  little  halt;  battered,  we 
take  it  for  granted.  In  another  obliviousness 
goes  a  man  in  a  mist:  as  he  walks  the  place 
changes;  he  witnesses  the  ripening  of  new 
gables  and  windows  from  nothingness,  the 
50 


gradual  emergence  of  trees ;  then  they  all  float 
past  and  he  can  only  dimly  see  the  road  upon 
which  he  treads  and  guess  at  what  new  shape 
will  float  within  his  mysterious  walls.  Of 
such  is  the  daily  life  of  very  simple  people, 
who  tend  sheep,  thatch  stacks — who  live  in 
the  present;  rather  humbly,  rather  dumbly, 
live.  Perhaps  the  pageantry  of  life  is  theirs 
more  than  ours,  after  all's  said,  and  their  con- 
tent deeper-rooted  than  we  think  it  What- 
ever  be  the  truth  in  this  matter,  so  long  as  we 
can  gain  no  more  from  learning  than  paltry 
authority  and  the  manners  of  slaves  and  copy- 
ists, we  are  not  getting  our  due,  and  the  subsidy 
paid  to  the  scholar  has  resulted  in  the  loss  of 
his  services  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  We  plan 
and  scheme  for  mediocrity,  and  have  hardly 
an  opinion  wrhich  we  must  not  put  writhin 
inverted  commas.  Worship  if  you  will  at  the 
feet  of  the  ancients ;  let  a  glaze  float  over  your 
eye  when  you  name  tremendous  names  and 
things,  if  you  are  bold  enough  to  venture  at  all 
where  every  bookworm  has  your  quotation  pat 
51  ^  f  rom 


from  his  lesson-book  and  waits  to  trip  you  up. 
Life  grown  professorial  is  still-life:  we  are 
stifled  with  text-books,  with  worn-out  admira- 
tions and  ready-made  romance;  we  are 
suspended  and  put  by ;  we  lack  the  swift  vivid 
flame  of  faith,  the  sense  of  mirth  which  fills  a 
night  of  pain  with  ecstasy  because  of  the  sheer 
beauty  of  the  dim  moonlight,  the  dawn,  and 
the  awaking  world.  The  young  artist  yearns 
with  a  mighty  sense  of  the  eternal  pastoral. 
He  sees  in  it  a  permanent  theme,  a  vantage- 
ground  from  which  he  may  view  eternal  and 
passing  things.  But  men  are  busy  with  art  as 
if  it  were  an  entertainment  for  the  rich,  to  be 
crowned  or  rejected,  to  be  accelerated  or 
hindered  at  the  whim  of  patronage  or  by  the 
judgment  of  a  journalist  or  professor  of  Taste. 
None  dream  that  the  high  heritage  of  art  is 
in  the  blood,  in  the  heart,  and  that  if  it  is  not 
living  it  is  dead.  Without  a  view  of  the 
present,  we  are  lost  to  a  sense  of  locality. 
What  is  French,  or  Dutch,  or  Chinese  interests 
us  more  than  our  own  product;  but  if  it  be 
52 


spread  out  thinly  enough  we  love  a  parade  of 
patriotism.  Loving  all  men  collectively,  we 
love  no  one  man  in  particular:  to  love  our 
neighbour  is  impossible;  he  is  too  near  to  us. 
We  forget  that  personal  fitness  is  the  first  and 
last  of  patriotism,  the  end  of  oppression  and 
all  selfish  evils.  But  the  present  is  built  into 
the  foreground,  and  we  rove  elsewhere. 
Men's  brows  are  heavy  with  "affairs"  of  State 
and  business;  nevertheless  the  Bill  is  ill- 
drawn,  the  business  commonplace,  as  may  be 
seen  by  all.  It  is  a  sham,  a  pretentious  sham. 
A  man  of  real  girth  of  soul  will  lift  the  com- 
mon task  to  the  height  of  inspiration;  every- 
thing he  does  becomes  magnificent  and  sugges- 
tive and  uplifting,  and  he  himself  a  force  of 
nature  like  buoyant  sea  and  air.  Life  has  to 
be  informed  with  greater  things,  our  room  be 
measured  by  our  sense  of  the  firmament  We 
are  set  in  obedience,  not  that  we  may  fail ;  but 
fitly  caused,  contained  and  continued.  We 
are,  in  reference  to  wonders  which  move  out- 
side us,  drawn  as  the  tides  of  the  sea  by  mys- 
53  ^  terious 


terious  and  powerful  pulsation.  Thus  in  com- 
merce is  the  idea  of  providing,  not  profit.  In 
the  arts,  praise  of  life  is  the  root-cause  which 
must  inform  the  work  through  and  through  till 
it  grows  lyrical — the  rest  may  be  safely  left. 
The  poet  must  fill  the  land  with  song,  and 
leave  the  matter  of  encouragement  within  the 
first  fact.  In  love  we  must  attend  to  love,  the 
divine  IT  which  with  the  two  lovers  forms 
the  Trinity.  She  greedy  for  herself,  he  greedy 
for  himself,  desiring  admiration,  praise,  com- 
fort from  love,  is  in  the  wrong:  the  joined 
regard  of  Love's  hovering  spirit  is  the  true 
unity  and  godhead  of  love.  For  low  content- 
ment, interest  will  do ;  but  in  the  higher  sort 
disinterest  solves  at  length  all  the  problem. 
And  taking  that  lofty  selflessness  for  ours  it 
will  be  easy  to  resist  those  invitations  which 
are  laid  as  a  net  to  catch  our  unwary  desires. 
The  gain  to  be  made  from  mere  temporizing 
and  extemporizing,  politic,  prudent  steps 
which  provide  a  living  but  first  rob  us  of  the 
centre  and  fount  of  our  life — these  must  be 
54 


slung  back  with  vehemence,  used  as  a  weapon 
of  assault  Utter  consistency  is  not  yet  to  be 
found;  yet  we  may  earn  much  by  frankness, 
being  loyal  this  much  to  the  truth  that  we 

preserve  a  gentle  heart  towards  our  fellows 
and  our  word  as  our  bond.  When  the  cleric 
bids  us  reverence  his  calling  and  his  Church, 
let  us  be  sure  that  if  that  reverence  has  no 
root  within  us,  its  flower  is  vainly  commanded. 
The  Church  has  to  include  us  before  we  are 
included :  it  exists  for  us,  not  we  for  it  The 
balanced  consciousness  accepts  no  flimsy 
reasons,  it  penetrates  all  disguises  and  comes 
at  the  truth  which  lurks  behind  them.  Sup- 
positions and  premises  are  as  a  hand  waving 
before  a  face:  we  see  the  face  more  than  the 
hand  all  the  while.  If  we  are  not  strong  by 
strength,  we  shall  not  be  so  by  a  display  of 
sweating  energy.  Again^  I  am  unlike  you, 
and  you  unlike  me;  our  faces  do  not  resemble 
each  other  except  in  the  broad  generic  sense, 
our  bones  do  not  exactly  tally;  still  conscious- 
ness is  a  single  principle  through  all  diversity 
55 


of  image.  It  is  not  easier  for  me  to  take  my 
way  than  for  you  to  take  yours.  I  may  not  be 
indifferent  to  that  which  you  are  indifferent 
to,  at  my  soul's  peril.  If  you  desire  to  thwart 
my  will,  or  I  your  will,  it  gives  no  promise  of 
safety,  however  liberally  inclined  each  of  us 
may  be.  The  mind  in  us  is  the  same  divine 
mind,  but  its  shape  and  purport  are  different. 
We  sow  variously,  you  and  I,  for  the  world's 
good  and  to  God's  praise.  In  the  beginning 
talent  no  larger  than  a  man's  hand,  things 
lightly  held.  Afterwards  character,  the  gritty 
substance  of  us  making  daily  demands.  We 
are  vehicles  of  life,  even  in  repose  sending  out 
rays  and  currents  of  force.  An  ancient  Irish 
saying  has  it  that  "God  possesses  the  heavens, 
but  He  covets  the  earth."  And  our  desire  is 
one  with  that.  The  task  is  never  done  with. 
Youth  finds  the  work  of  age  has  left  much 
undone,  unprovided;  but  again  youth  grows 
to  age,  and  the  tools  are  never  idle  one  genera- 
tion to  another.  We  are  ripened,  but  know 
not  the  process,  being  preserved  by  one  blind- 

56 


ness,  one  vision.  For  me  others  bear  experi- 
ence which  my  life  could  not  else  hold. 
Others  tell  to  me  my  own  thoughts  and  keep 
some  unspoken ;  but  not  all  my  thoughts — the 
rest  are  mine  to  tell.  Nature  provides  for 
food  and  for  seed  also,  in  man  as  in  corn. 
Variety  and  contrariety  set  up  the  spark  which 
sets  the  world  on  fire,  and  no  gain  would  be 
in  causing  mankind  to  be  melted  and  poured 
into  uniformity  and  conformity.  The  design 
is  already  inclusive  enough,  exclusive  enough, 
before  we  have  our  club  and  lodge ;  the  associ- 
ation of  minds  is  here,  the  convivial  party 
already  formed  in  the  concourse  of  people. 
Manners  also  began  before  Manners  were  in- 
vented. The  mother  of  false  etiquette  is  tact, 
the  father  self-interest.  I  am  long  about  it; 
but  for  me  at  least  it  is  true  that  this  place  of 
mine  is  my  place,  and  life  with  its  numberless 
shifts  and  adjustments  and  glories,  an  excite- 
ment and  a  pleasure  too,  and  not  the  less  so 
for  the  part  I  play  in  it  willingly  and  with 
my  whole  heart  If  the  glory  of  the  day,  or 
57  ^my 


my  glory,  is  not  astonishing  always,  I  shall 
not  disparage  the  age  on  that  account:  the 
spread  feast  and  the  high  lamps  I  shall  seek, 
or  go  by  sea  or  remote  footpath  as  daily,  pre- 
pared ever  to  stay  and  depart.  In  what  scene 
or  event  my  needful  salvation  lurks,  I  cannot 
tell:  it  is  no  hysterical  anxiety  now.  The 
reasons  which  aim  to  convert  me  must  be  ex- 
cellent ones;  I  have  stored  so  many  early 
symptoms  away  by  now,  and  am  particular 
what  belief  I  take.  For  now  I  cannot  choose 
but  choose  my  friends  for  the  whole  time. 
My  father's  own  son,  my  dear  early  com- 
panion, may  be  my  brother  indeed;  but  who 
knows? — perhaps  we  are  carried  apart,  and  I 
derive  strange  new  brotherhood  elsewhere  and 
he  has  met  one  he  loves  better.  The  reckon- 
ing is  not  to  my  bill:  the  love  I  seek  turns 
away  her  sad  face ;  where  I  was  careless,  stead- 
fastness declares  itself  upon  my  side.  North 
becomes  South,  the  East  exchanges  with  the 
West,  and  whence  dolour  was  promised,  joy 

58 


runs  out  to  meet  me  and  presses  my  hands  and 
kisses  my  lips. 

flfe  He  only  can  be  content  who  has  first  known 
discontent,  for  then  does  it  greatly  please,  like 
"rest  after  toil  and  port  after  stormy  seas." 
We  are  changed  by  devious  ways,  and  charged 
with  more  than  we  know,  and  cannot  guess  our 
own  discontent,  good  and  ill  fortune  requiring 
our  fullness  when  we  are  prone  to  hold  the 
sum  of  life  lightly.  By  nature  we  lean  upon 
content,  and  press  on  through  labour,  allured 
by  the  picture  of  repose  which  we  have  made 
for  ourselves.  Poor,  we  imagine  in  riches 
ease  far  beyond  the  power  of  riches  to  buy; 
troubled,  we  look  for  an  end  to  adversity,  ever 
in  the  thought  of  that  heaven  in  whose  benign 
serenity  our  weary  bodies  will  revive  and  our 
burdening  anxieties  be  laid  down.  Nor  is  it 
ours  to  guess  how  we  shall  be  preserved,  thus 
willingly  shedding  all  that  which  still  pre- 
serves us  through  many  vicissitudes;  for  we 
are  persuaded  that  our  divine  discontent  is 
59  fife  well-founded 


well-founded,  and  that  in  its  course  divine 
content  is  revealed.  But  if  we  go  in  fear  of 
the  over-shadowing  cloud  and  energy  of  cir- 
cumstance, and  care  more  for  good  which  is 
easily  within  the  span  of  our  imaginations,  we 
are  still  in  the  need  to  be  in  the  gripe  of 
affairs.  To  be  contented  with  content  which 
is  the  negation  of  endeavour,  has  no  longer  in 
it  the  assurance  of  virtue,  in  the  regards  of 
men.  It  is  better  to  say:  "I  am  secure;  I  pass 
from  one  insecurity  to  another.  My  mind  no 
longer  slips  upon  the  green  weed:  doubt  is  a 
spectacle,  in  whose  shadow  I  shall  yet  win  the 
vision  and  discover  the  disposition  of  the 
divine." 


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